SAN MIGUEL ISLAND : Scuba Gear Not Blamed in Drowning
A USC professor who drowned last month while diving off the coast of Ventura County was not the victim of faulty scuba gear, a medical examiner said Monday.
Results of an investigation conducted by Aqua Ventures, a Camarillo dive shop, suggest that equipment failure did not cause Willard Van Tuyl Rusch, 58, to drown during a dive off the southern coast of San Miguel Island on May 27, deputy coroner Jim Wingate said.
“All the gear came up fine,” Wingate said. “We really don’t know why it happened.”
Rusch, an avid diver, suddenly stopped breathing and sank 90 feet to the bottom of the area he was exploring during a trip on the dive boat Peace, witnesses said.
A toxicology report is still incomplete, Wingate said, but he did not expect to find an explanation there either.
“It just seems to have been a terrible accident,” Wingate said.
The death was the first attributed to scuba diving this year, Wingate said. One scuba-related death was reported in each of the past two years, he said.
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